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“This half-hour past. They’re calling in all the bronzes and the other queens. They’re going to Southern in force and make them give the egg back.”
“How do they know it was Southern?” asked Jaxom.
“Who else would need to steal a queen egg?”
Then all conversation was suspended as Ruth took them smartly between. They erupted into the air over Benden, and suddenly three bronzes were arrowing out of the sun right at them, flaming. Ruth let out a squeal and went between, emerging over the lake and chattering at his would-be attackers at the top of his voice.
I’m Ruth. I’m Ruth. I’m Ruth!
“That was close!” Finder said, gulping. His hands were pinching Jaxom’s arms nerveless.
You just missed my wing tip. I’m Ruth! They apologized, the white dragon added in a calmer tone to his rider. But he turned his wing tip for a close look.
Menolly groaned. “I forgot to tell you we were to come in yelling who we were. You’d think Ruth at least would be passed without challenge.”
As she spoke, more dragons appeared, trumpeting to the three bronzes guarding from the heights. The new arrivals circled tightly to land their riders by a crowd gathered around the entrance to the Hatching Ground. Jaxom, Finder and Menolly started across the Bowl to join them.
“Jaxom, have you ever seen so many dragons?” Menolly looked around at the crowded Weyr rim, at the dragons on Weyr ledges, all with wings spread, ready for instant flight. “Oh, Jaxom, what if it comes to dragon fighting dragon?”
The terror in her voice echoed his own feelings perfectly.
“Those fool Oldtimers must be desperate,” Finder said grimly.
“How could they get away with such bare-faced thievery?” Jaxom wanted to know. “Ramoth never leaves a clutch.” Not since the time F’lessan and I disturbed her eggs, he added guiltily to himself.
“F’nor brought us the news,” Menolly said. “He said she’d gone to feed. Half the Benden fire-lizards were in the Ground. They always are—”
“With an odd one or two visiting from the Southern Weyr, no doubt,” Finder added.
Menolly nodded. “That’s what F’nor said. So the Oldtimers would have known when she wasn’t there. F’nor said she’d just killed when three bronzes appeared, passed the watchdragon . . . I mean, why would the watchdragon question bronze dragons? They ducked in the upper tunnel to the Hatching Ground, Ramoth gave an almighty shriek and went between. The next thing three bronzes came flying out of the upper entrance, they had heard Ramoth scream. She came charging out of the Hatching Ground but they had gone between before she’d got a winglength off the ground.”
“Didn’t they send dragons after them?”
“Ramoth went after! With Mnementh but a breath behind her. Not that it did any good.”
“Why not?”
“The bronzes went between time.”
“And not even Ramoth would know when.”
“Exactly. Mnementh checked the Southern Weyr and Hold and half the hot beaches.”
“Not even the Oldtimers could be stupid enough to take a queen egg straight back to Southern.”
“But surely the Oldtimers would not know,” Finder added wearily, “that we know they took the egg.”
By that time they had reached the outskirts of the crowd, where dragonriders from other Weyrs as well as Lords Holder and Craftmasters had gathered. Lessa stood on the ledge of her Weyr, F’lar beside her along with Fandarel and Robinton, who both looked extremely grim and anxious. N’ton stopped halfway down the steps, talking earnestly and with angry gestures to two other bronze riders. Slightly to one side were the three other Benden Weyrwomen, and several other women who must be queenriders from the other Weyrs. The atmosphere of outrage and frustration was oppressive. Dominating the entire scene was Ramoth, who paced up and down in front of the Hatching Ground, pausing now and again to peer in at the eggs remaining on the hot sands. Her tail started lashing and she let out angry buglings that obscured the discussions going on above her on the ledge.
“It’s dangerous to take an egg between,” someone in front of Jaxom and Menolly said.
“I suppose it could go a ways, so long as the egg was good and warm to start and took no hurt.”
“We ought to just mount up and go down and sear those Oldtimers out of the Weyr.”
“And have dragon fight dragon? You’re as bad as the Oldtimers.”
“But we can’t have dragons stealing our queen eggs! This is the worst insult Benden’s ever taken from the Oldtimers. And I say, make them pay for it.”
“The Southern Weyr is desperate,” Menolly said in an undertone to Jaxom. “None of their queens has risen to mate. The bronzes are dying, and they don’t even have any young greens.”
Just then Ramoth gave a piteous cry, throwing her head up toward Lessa. Every dragon in the Weyr answered her call, deafening the humans. Jaxom could see Lessa leaning over the ledge, one hand outstretched toward the despairing queen. Then, because he was a good head above most of the crowd and looking that way, Jaxom saw something dark fluttering in the Hatching Ground. He heard a muffled cry of pain.
“Look! What’s that? In the Hatching Ground!”
Only those around him heard his exclamation or noticed him pointing. All Jaxom could think of was that if the Southern bronzes were indeed dying, the Oldtimers might use this confusion to try and steal a bronze egg as well.
He took to his heels, followed by Menolly and Finder, but he was overcome by such a wave of weakness that he was forced to stop. Something seemed to be sapping his strength, but Jaxom had no idea what it could be.
“What’s the matter, Jaxom?”
“Nothing.” Jaxom pulled Menolly’s hands from his arm and all but pushed her toward the Ground. “The eggs. The eggs!”
His injunction was drowned in Ramoth’s bellow of surprise and exultation.
“The egg. The queen egg!”
By the time Jaxom had recovered from his inexplicable vertigo and reached the Hatching Ground, everyone was staring with relief at the sight of the queen egg, now safely positioned once again between Ramoth’s forelegs.
A fire-lizard, reckless with curiosity, got a scant winglength into the Ground before Ramoth’s bellow of fury sent it streaking away.
In relief, people began to chatter, as they moved back out of the Hatching Ground to where the sand was not so uncomfortable underfoot. Someone suggested that perhaps the egg had merely rolled away and Ramoth only thought it had been taken. But too many had seen the empty place, where the queen egg had too obviously been missing. And what about the three strange bronzes streaking out of the high entrance to the Ground? More acceptable was the notion that the Oldtimers had had second thoughts about the theft, that they, too, were reluctant to pit dragon against dragon.
Lessa had remained in the Ground, trying to persuade Ramoth to let her see if the egg had come to any harm. Soon she came hurrying out of the Ground to F’lar and Robinton.
“That’s the same egg but it’s older and harder, ready to Hatch anytime now. The girls must be brought.”
For the third time that morning, Benden Weyr was in a state of high excitement—happier fortunately, but still generating as much chaos. Jaxom and Menolly managed to keep out of the way but remained close enough to hear what was going on.
“Whoever took that egg kept it at least ten days or more,” they heard Lessa saying angrily. “That demands action.”
“The egg is back safely,” Robinton said, trying to calm her.
“Are we cowards to ignore such an insult?” she asked the other dragonmen, turning away from Robinton’s calmer words.
“If to be brave,” Robinton’s voice laid scorn on the quality, “means to pit dragon against dragon, I’d rather be a coward.”
Lessa’s white-hot outrage noticeably cooled.
Dragon against dragon. The words echoed through the crowd. The thought turned sickeningly in Jaxom’ s mind and he could feel Menolly beside him shutting
off the implications of such a contest.
“The egg was somewhen for long enough to be brought close to hatching hardness,” Lessa went on, her face set with her anger. “It’s probably been handled by their candidate. It could have been influenced enough so that the fledgling won’t Impress here.”
“No one has ever proved how much an egg is influenced by pre-Hatching contact,” Robinton was saying in his most persuasive voice. “Or so you’ve had me understand any number of times. Short of dumping their candidate on top of the egg when it hatches, I can’t think their conniving can do them any good or the egg any more harm.”
The assembled dragonfolk were still very tense but the initial impetus to rise in wings and destroy the Southern Weyr had cooled considerably with the return of the egg, however mysterious that return was.
“Obviously, we can no longer be complacent,” said F’lar, glancing up at the watchdragons, “or secure in the delusion of the inviolability of the Hatching Ground. Any Hatching Ground.” Nervously he pushed the hair back from his forehead. “By the First Shell, they’ve a lot of gall, trying to steal one of Ramoth’s eggs.”
“The first way to secure this Weyr is to ban those dratted fire-lizards,” Lessa said heatedly. “They’re little tattlers, worse than useless . . .”
“Not all of them, Lessa,” Brekke said, stepping up beside the Weyrwoman. “Some of them come on legitimate errands and give us a lot of assistance.”
“Two were playing that game,” Robinton said without humor.
Menolly dug Jaxom in the ribs, reminding him that the Harperhall’s fire-lizards, hers included, did a lot of assisting.
“I don’t care,” Lessa told Brekke and glared around at the assembled, looking for fire-lizards. “I don’t want to see them about here. Ramoth’s not to be pestered by those plaguey things. Something’s to be done to keep them where they belong.”
“Mark ’em with their colors!” was Brekke’s quick reply. “Mark ’em and teach them to speak their name and origin the way dragons do. They’re quite capable of learning courtesy. At least the ones who come to Benden by order.”
“Have them report to you, Brekke, or Mirrim,” Robinton suggested.
“Just keep them away from Ramoth and me!” Lessa peered in at Ramoth and then whipped around. “And someone bring up that wherry that Ramoth didn’t eat. She’ll be the better for something in her belly right now. We’ll discuss this violation of our Weyr later. In detail.”
F’lar ordered several dragonmen to get the wherry and then courteously thanked the rest of the assembled for their prompt reply to his summons. He gestured to several of the Weyrleaders and Robinton to join him in the weyr above.
“There’s not a fire-lizard in sight,” Menolly said to Jaxom. “I told Beauty to stay away. She’s answered me scared to her bones.”
“So’s Ruth,” Jaxom said as they crossed the Bowl to him. “He’s turned almost gray.”
Ruth was more than scared, he was trembling with anxiety.
Something is wrong. Something is not right, he told his rider, his eyes whirling erratically with gray tones.
“Your wing was injured?”
No. Not my wing. Something is wrong in my head. I don’t feel right. Ruth shifted from all four legs to his hindquarters, and then back again to all four, rustling his wings.
“Is it because all the fire-lizards have gone? Or the excitement about Ramoth’s egg?”
Ruth said it was both and neither. The fire-lizards were all frightened; they remembered something which frightened them.
“Remembered? Huh!” Jaxom felt exasperated with fire-lizards and their associative memories, and their ridiculous images which were making his sensible Ruth miserable.
“Jaxom?” Menolly had detoured to the Lower Caverns and shared with him the handful of meatrolls she’d cadged from the cooks. “Finder says Robinton wants me to go back to the Harpercrafthall and let them and Fort Hold know what’s been happening. I’m also to start marking my fire-lizards. Look!” She pointed to the Weyr rim and the Star Stones. “The watchdragon is chewing firestone. Oh, Jaxom!”
“Dragon against dragon.” He shuddered violently.
“Jaxom, it can’t come to that,” she said in a choked voice.
Neither of them could finish their meatrolls. Silently they mounted Ruth, who took them aloft.
As Robinton climbed the steps to the queen’s weyr, he was thinking faster than he had ever done. Too much was going to depend on what happened now—the whole future course of the planet, if he read reactions correctly. He knew more than he ought about conditions in the Southern Weyr but his knowledge had done him no service today. He berated himself for being so naive, as unseeingly obtuse as any dragonrider for assuming that the Weyrs were inviolable and a Hatching Ground untouchable. He had had warnings from Piemur, but he simply hadn’t correlated the information properly. Yet, in light of today’s occurrence, he ought to have arrived at the logical conclusion that the desperate Southerners would make this prodigious attempt to revive their failing Weyr with the blood of a new and viable queen. Even if he had reached the proper conclusion, Robinton thought ruefully, how ever would he have been able to persuade Lessa and F’lar that that was what the Southerners planned today. The Weyrleaders would have been properly scornful of such a ridiculous notion.
No one was laughing today. No one at all.
Strange that so many people had assumed that the Oldtimers would meekly accept their exile and remain docilely on their continent. They had not been cramped in their accommodation, merely in their hope of a future. T’kul must have been the motivating force—T’ron had lost all his vigor and initiative after that duel with F’lar. Robinton was reasonably certain that the two Weyrwomen, Merika and Mardra, had had no part in the plan; they wouldn’t wish to be deposed by a young queen and her rider. Had one of them returned the egg?
No, thought Robinton, it had to be someone with an intimate knowledge of the Benden Weyr Hatching Ground . . . or someone possessed of the blindest good luck and skill to go between into and out of the cavern.
Robinton relived briefly the compound terror he had experienced during the egg’s absence. He winced thinking of Lessa’s fury. She was still likely to arouse the Northern dragonriders. She was quite capable of sustaining the unthinking frenzy that had all but dominated the events of the morning. If she continued in her demand for vengeance against the guilty Southerners, it could be as much a disaster for Pern as the first Threadfall had been.
The egg had been returned. Robinton clung to the comforting fact that it was apparently unharmed despite its ageing in that elapsed subjective time. Lessa could choose to make its condition an issue. And, if the egg did not hatch an unimpaired queen, there was no doubt in Robinton’s mind that Lessa would insist on retribution.
But the egg had been returned! He must drum in that fact, must emphasize that obviously not all Southerners had been party to this heinous action. Some Oldtimers still honored the old codes of conduct. No doubt one of them had been perceptive enough to guess what punitive action would be launched against the criminals and wished, as fervently as Robinton, to avoid such a confrontation.
“This is indeed a black moment,” someone with a deep sad voice said. The Harper turned, grateful for the sane support of the Mastersmith. Fandarel’s heavy features were etched with worry and, for the first time, Robinton noticed the puffiness of age blurring the man’s features, yellowing his eyes. “Such perfidy must be punished—and yet it cannot be!”
The thought of dragon fighting dragon again seared Robinton’s mind with terror. “Too much would be lost!” he said to Fandarel.
“They have already lost all they had, being sent into exile. I often wondered why they didn’t rebel before.”
“They have now. With a vengeance.”
“To be met with more vengeance. My friend, we must keep our wits today as never before. I fear Lessa may be unreasonable and unthinking. Already she has let emotion dominate common
sense.” The Smith indicated the leather patch on Robinton’s shoulder where his fire-lizard, Zair, customarily perched. “Where is your little friend now?”
“Brekke’s Weyr with Grail and Berd. I wanted him to return to the Harpercrafthall with Menolly, but he refused.”
The Smith shook his great head again in sad slow sweeps as the two men entered the Council Chamber.
“I do not have a fire-lizard myself but I know only good of the little creatures. It never occurred to me that they constituted any threat for anyone.”
“You will support me in this then, Fandarel?” asked Brekke, who had entered behind them with F’nor. “Lessa is not herself. I do really understand her anxiety but she cannot be allowed to damn all fire-lizards for the mischief of a few.”
“Mischief?” F’nor was perturbed. “Don’t let Lessa hear you call what happened mischief. Mischief? Stealing a queen egg?”
“The fire-lizard’s part was only mischief . . . popping in to Ramoth’s cave like how many others have been doing since the eggs were laid.” Brekke spoke more sharply than she usually did, and the tightness about F’nor’s eyes and mouth indicated to Robinton that this couple were not in accord. “Fire-lizards have no sense of wrong or right.”
“They’ll have to learn . . .” F’nor began with more heat than discretion.
“I fear that we, who have no dragons,” said Robinton, quickly intervening—lest today’s event fracture the bond between the two lovers—“have been making too much of our little friends, carting them about with us wherever we go, doting as parents of a late child, permitting too many liberties of conduct. But a more restrained attitude toward fire-lizards in our midst is a very minor consideration in today’s affair.”
F’nor had dampened his aggravation. He nodded now at the Harper. “Suppose that egg hadn’t been returned, Robinton . . .” His shoulders jerked in a convulsive shake and he pushed at his forehead as if trying to eliminate all memory of that scene.
“If the egg hadn’t been returned,” Robinton said implacably, “dragon would have fought dragon!” He spaced out his words, putting as much force and distaste as he could in his tone.
